Death and the Mini Mart
by Sterling Lee
Summary: Death makes everyone's acquaintance in the end. Agent Coulson does his duty and he doesn't look back. Based on "A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Thor's Hammer."


_Author's Note: _This is based on the Marvel one-shot _A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Thor's Hammer_, which you've totally seen because come on. You read Avengers fanfiction. The video can be found on YouTube, and only after I watched it and got all excited about this badass guy in the suit did I actually decide to see the movie (and then of course Joss Whedon happened). Revised slightly from a previously posted version.

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Phil Coulson bumps elbows with death on a regular basis. He is the shadow walking: _man-in-black_, custodian of every mystery it would mean your life to hear. He holds steady under the weight of a stranger world than conspiracy theorists could ever imagine. On SHIELD's behalf he keeps the peace, or, when peace can no longer be kept, gives death a call and makes sure they have an appointment.

People need to be protected, more often than not, from one another—before the Avengers, he was still SHIELD's go-to man. Suit to end all suits—Nick Fury's keenest eye. He watched Iron Man's rise, dreamed Captain America, kept tabs on the Hulk, handled Hawkeye and the Widow in the outer world. He saw the new world that was rising in them.

It's a shady résumé, and he has proved its worth with his own two hands.

Tonight he is driving down to New Mexico. SHIELD's found something there that crashed to earth and left a smoking crater, Roswell-style. It fits with the trend: nowhere will stay quiet these days. Dark things are coming to the surface.

So it's night and the radio is going. He's tearing through the desert under velvet sky. Tapping his fingers on the wheel he inches down on the gas. Barren lands whip by.

He's hoping that whatever's in the desert won't blow up in his face. He's not a credulous man but in his line of work, things that fall from the sky tend to get ugly, fast.

He's hoping for no space tentacles this time.

Ten-thirty and it's time to top up the tank. The gas station he pulls into is somewhere in the back of beyond, with flatlands stretching out on all sides. The lamps overhead cast lonely pools of light on the concrete.

When he steps into the mini-mart, a familiar shiver crawls down his spine. It's as if something had brushed invisibly by him and on, setting his senses on full alert. He stands rigid but unsurprised. Something will happen here tonight.

He and death are practically colleagues by this point, they've met so often. It's a fact of his job and therefore a fact of his life: there are monsters, and they do come out at night. And because it is SHIELD's duty, an agent is always there. He goes where he's sent. What dark there is will find him.

Continuing into the store, he gives the cashier a faint nod and goes straight for the snack aisle. Dark will follow but to stand around waiting for it is to waste your life. He has learned to live ready, to get on with business. When it comes it comes, and it always does. He turns his attention to the donuts.

Powdered or frosted is the pertinent question right now. He figures since he's speeding towards an alien phenomenon he deserves to treat himself to something processed and unholy—with a gunslinger's squint he tries to decide between powdered or chocolate.

Crouched in the aisle, he doesn't hear the intruders until one of them shouts. He spares only a few seconds to scold himself before straightening slowly into action, hands loose by his sides. His worried look is disarming. He knows this.

There is blunt brutality in the faces of the burglars—two dead-end men whose whole strength is a pair of shotguns and the cover of night. Coulson tips his head to hear death breathing somewhere at his ear. The job has found him after all, and it begs to be settled.

He engages the men with all the right signals, treading carefully, reading their tension. He'll push their buttons when the right time comes and not before. Darkness gathers in the corners of the mini-mart, spilling over the floor.

He gives them his car keys. Parting with his gun is acceptable too, if it helps him to free the mini-mart and teach these thugs a lesson—

Well. He decides that "lesson" isn't really the word to use. These two won't be getting a, a _moral_. This is not for their improvement. No one here has any business with a higher law.

Sidling into the next aisle, he prepares to put his gun down. No, this is just Phil Coulson, doing his duty. Taking on the dark that follows man.

He crouches. Lets his gun drop. It slides down the aisle, attracting two pairs of eyes.

What follows would make one hell of a lesson (but Coulson is a humble man and won't think of it as such). Concise dissertation in ballistics and chaos, expressed with foot and fist. Punctuated by a shotgun's discharge and the dull thud of flesh on flesh. Closing argument: strike, pivot, strike again. Bodies hit the floor.

Straightening up, he walks back to retrieve his donuts. His tie is slightly askew.

He plunks both packages on the counter, figuring that if he wasn't entitled to a snack before, he is now. "Sorry about the mess." And then, more softly, "I couldn't decide."

The cashier shivers as if something has just brushed the back of her neck, and he is a little bit sorry. He is supposed to feel death near so she won't have to. She rings him up and he is out of there, under the great New Mexico night.

Phil Coulson bumps elbows with death, and nods as he passes on by. _This_ is the lesson, and it's a very specific one that tonight's students will, thankfully, never be tested on again. Because Phil Coulson will evaporate and they will never know who he is. He will not enter their lives again but for one other time.

That time is when he faces a mad god and stalls for dear life. He feels death at his shoulder and knows that this time around the dark is here for _him_. He is familiar with it and he is only a little scared, really. So he nods like he has done on battlefields the world over, and does not turn away. He holds steady—not just for the Avengers but for the people who need a shield, who can't face the dark alone.

One of those people is a cellist. One sweeps the floor in a shawarma joint, and another is a cashier. Two are petty crooks newly behind bars. There are millions more who don't know Phil Coulson and never will, because he is nothing but dark glasses and a suit. He is the one passing through on hidden business, and it is not his job to be extraordinary. He walks at night and in the long shadows of other men.

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In my head this is subtitled _Love Letter to a Badass_. _"Phil Coulson bumps elbows with death on a regular basis_"was the first line, and because of that this story was very nearly a crossover with Terry Pratchett's Discworld (or _Good Omens_; all I wanted was the character of Death). That could still happen.


End file.
